Ishi added to California Hall of Fame along with Montana, Beatty, others

Jason Sebastian of Woodbridge, Va., and his family look at the Ishi display at the Lake Oroville Visitor Center while on vacation visiting family in Oroville on Aug. 17, 2011.(Bill Husa/Staff File Photo)

Ishi appears to be the first full-blooded California Indian in the Hall of Fame. Artist Fritz Scholder — one-quarter Luiseño — was enshrined a few years ago.

Ishi came out of the wild and into Oroville on Aug. 29, 1911, after many years of hiding, prompted by the killing by vigilantes of most of his tribesmen in the 1850s and 1860s.

They were rarely seen for about 50 years, although the ranchers who worked in the eastern Tehama County foothills that was Yahi country knew the surviving Indians were there.

Then on Nov. 10, 1908, a group of surveyors stumbled into a hidden camp holding the last four surviving Yahi, on a ledge above Deer Creek, about 20 miles due north of Chico.

Returning the next day, the surveyors found the camp had been broken, and the band was never seen again.

Three years later, when Ishi came into Oroville, he was the sole survivor of the four.

Placed temporarily in a jail cell, he was ultimately gathered up by anthropologists from the University of California, who gave him the name Ishi (Yahi for "man"), and took him to their museum in San Francisco.

Except for a trip in the summer of 1914 back into his homeland, he lived the rest of his life in the museum, working as a janitor and providing information about his culture and lifestyle.

He died March 25, 1916, of pneumonia. His brain was removed and sent to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. The rest of his body was cremated and placed in an urn in the Mount Olivet Cemetery in Colma, south of San Francisco.

The brain's destination was largely lost from history.

Then in 1997, the four Butte County tribes — Enterprise, Mooretown, Berry Creek and Mechoopda — formed the Butte County Native American Cultural Committee, and began pressing for repatriation of Ishi's remains.

The brain was discovered a couple of years later. The Smithsonian determined Ishi's closest relations were the Redding Rancheria and Pit River Tribe, and the ashes and brain were returned to them.

In April 2000, Ishi was buried at an undisclosed location in his homeland.